Again, I disagree. The source of the compliment matters. I appreciate a thank you, no matter what the source. If my code helps someone, and they're grateful, I'm pleased. However, if someone who is a widely recognized expert in the field compliments me on my code...wow!

Check the front page. Every day, there's a post by Anonymous Monk with a newbie question. To AN, our mastery of shift and $_ are pure magic. I'm glad I can help our SofPW, but it ends there.

Now, if somehow, I was able to come up with a regular expression that, say, matched all valid IP addresses in 10 characters, and Merlyn made a point of complimenting on me, I'd be on the moon! Here's a guy who not only makes a living with perl, but makes a living writing and lecturing on perl, and he's impressed by something I did? I'm on top of the world!

I cannot, however, get the same warm fuzzy from pointing out a dropped bracket in someone's first script.